Issues 2000: Gore and Hollywood: Biting The Hand That Pays

It was to have been a cozy breakfast on the Paramount lot, just the Vice President and the heads of the major movie studios and television networks discussing how to promote cancer awareness. Then Al Gore marched in with a rough cut of his own: a five-minute video of movie and television scenes in which the hottest stars--John Travolta, Nicolas Cage, Winona Ryder among them--were smoking cigarettes. The 1997 power breakfast quickly became a food fight, with accusations of irresponsibility and censorship flying back and forth between Gore and the angry moguls.